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The trade of human beings from Africa to Louisiana began in 1718 with the first slave ships, the Aurore and the Duc du Maine, arriving in 1719. Those ships carried 451 enslaved Africans to the Louisiana colony. Their voyage marked the beginning of a transatlantic slave trade that continued through French, Spanish and American rule, forcing approximately 12,000 documented and an untold number of undocumented men, women and children onto slave ships bound for Louisiana.
Wolof, Bambara, Mandingo, Fulbe, Nard, Ganga, Kissy, Susu, Mina, Fon, Yoruba, Chamba, Hausa, Igbo, Ibibio, Kongo/Angola, Makwa and members of many other "nations" were deported from
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Greater Senegambia, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, West Central and Southeast Africa. Their skills and cultural practices were foundational to the development of Louisiana. Their Middle Passage averaged more than sixty days, and thousands perished from causes ranging from malnutrition, scurvy and other diseases to the violent suppression of onboard rebellion. Those who did survive were often unloaded here along the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1808, the United States banned the international slave trade,
though illegal shipments of Africans to Louisiana continued, with the last documented slave ship, the Fenix, arriving in New Orleans in 1830.
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